Posted 5 years ago on April 6, 2012, 3:04 p.m. EST by fiftyfourforty
(1077)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Every day kids are snatched from their parents or other caregivers for frivolous reasons or in circumstances that would require reasonable people to try something less drastic. Generally these baby snatchings happen prior to any review, even by a kangaroo family court procedure.

Imagine you are three years old. whatever it is your mother is or isn't doing, she is your world. Strange people come into your home in the middle of the night. They take you away, and maybe put your mom in handcuffs before your eyes. You cling to your kidnapper who takes you to a strange place where you see no one and nothing familiar and rip you out of the arms of the first kidnapper to whom you've been clinging. No one can comfort you now and you are changed forever by that trauma, even if you end up returned to your mom or put in a foster home that is caring. DAMAGE IS DONE.

This happens thousands of times a year in NYC. It's done by ACS usually and sometimes by cops. I hope that some time #OWS can look into this and put it on the agenda.

50 Comments

What is the alternative? Authorities have taken a more aggressive role is child welfare cases in response to abuse and deaths. Should we be in favor of doing nothing when there is a chance of a life being in danger? When, if at all, do yo see the need for the authorities to step in?

The politics of it is all based on emotion, that's why I question the wisdom of adding the emotion of protest on top of it. The links fiftyfourforty provided below, offer sound evidence based reasoning for changing the laws. The people effected by this are often poor, so financial support would be needed, but legal challenges to the CPS procedures should be mounted.

We need to look at what CPS actually does, not what people who are not familiar with it imagine it must or should do. What do you think about the scenario i put forward of what a baby snatching actually is? I can attest to that because it was my job and I did it countless times.

The Evidence is In: Foster Care vs. Keeping Families Together: The Definitive Studies
For a printable pdf copy of this paper, click here

NCCPR long has argued that many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they had remained with their own families and those families had been given the right kinds of help.

Turns out that’s not quite right.

In fact, many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they remained with their own families even if those families got only the typical help (which tends to be little help, wrong help, or no help) commonly offered by child welfare agencies.

That’s the message from the largest studies ever undertaken to compare the impact on children of foster care versus keeping comparably maltreated children with their own families. The study was the subject of a front-page story in USA Today.

The first study, published in 2007, looked at outcomes for more than 15,000 children. It compared foster children not to the general population but to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. The result: On measure after measure the children left in their own homes do better.

In fact, it’s not even close.

Children left in their own homes are far less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, far less likely to wind up in the juvenile justice system and far more likely to hold a job for at least three months than comparably maltreated children who were placed in foster care.

One year later, the same researcher published another study, this time of 23,000 cases. Again he compared foster children to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. This time he looked at which children were more likely to be arrested as adults. Once again, the children left in their own homes fared better than the foster children.

IMPLICATIONS:

● The studies use the term “foster care” generically; they include children placed in any form of substitute care. That’s important because whenever information like this comes out, people who want to warehouse children in orphanages try to use it to justify their schemes. But these studies were not limited to family foster homes. And it takes three single-spaced pages just to list all the other studies documenting the harm of orphanages. (Those pages are available from NCCPR.)

● This does not mean that no child ever should be placed in foster care. But it means many fewer children should be placed in foster care.

The studies excluded the most severe cases of maltreatment, a very small proportion of any child protective worker’s caseload, precisely because, horror stories that make the front page notwithstanding, these are cases where everyone with time to investigate would agree that removal from the home was the only alternative.

Rather, the studies focused on, by far, the largest group of cases any worker sees, those that can best be called the “in-between cases” where the parent is neither all victim nor all villain; cases where there are real problems in the home, but wide disagreement over what should be done. As the first study itself notes: “These are the cases most likely to be affected by policy changes that alter the threshold for placement.” They also, are, of course, the cases most likely to be affected by a foster-care panic – which also alters the threshold for placement.

Even among these cases, the figures are averages. Certainly there are some individual cases among the thousands studied in which foster care was the less harmful alternative. But what the data make clear is that foster care is vastly overused, damaging large numbers of children who would do better in life had they remained in their own homes, even with the minimal help most child welfare agencies offer to families.

This says less about how well child protection agencies do in helping families than it does about how enormously toxic a foster care intervention is. Anything that toxic must be used very sparingly and in very small doses.

● Child welfare agencies have a disingenuous response to all this: “Why yes, of course,” they like to say. “This research just shows what we’ve always said ourselves: foster care only should be used as a last resort; of course we keep families together whenever possible.” But this research shows that agency actions belie their words. These studies found thousands of children already in foster care who would have done better had child protection agencies not taken them away in the first place.

● The USA Today story quotes one deservedly well-respected expert as saying that the 2007 study was the first to produce such results. But that is an error. Actually it was at least the second since 2006. A University of Minnesota study used a different methodology and measured different outcomes, but came to very similar conclusions.

● Though the USA Today story says other “studies” go the other way, the one cited, with less than 1/100th the sample size of the new studies, a shorter duration and at least one other serious flaw (omitting foster children in care for less than six months) is the only one we know of. And that study focused on reunification, not on children never removed in the first place.

And, of course, that study also compared foster care only to typical “help” for families in their own homes, which generally is little or nothing. Providing the kinds of real help NCCPR recommends (See Twelve Ways to do Child Welfare Right) would likely change the result and, in the case of the three more recent and more rigorous studies, create an even wider gap in outcomes favoring keeping families together.

● Perhaps most intriguing, these studies suggest it actually may be possible to quantify the harm of a foster-care panic, a huge, sudden upsurge in needless removals after the death of a child “known to the system” gets extensive news coverage.

Thanks to these studies, we now have an estimate of how much worse foster children do on key outcomes compared with comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. It’s also usually possible to calculate how many more children are taken away during a foster-care panic. So it should be possible to estimate how many more children will wind up under arrest, how many more will become pregnant and how many more will be jobless as a result of a foster-care panic.

It also should be possible to estimate roughly how many children have been saved from these rotten outcomes in states and localities that have reformed their systems to emphasize safe, proven programs to keep families together.

These new studies and the Minnesota study are in addition to the comprehensive study of foster care alumni showing that only one in five could be said to be doing well as a young adult – in other words, foster care churns out walking wounded four times out of five. (See NCCPR’s publication 80 Percent Failure for more on this study) and the mass of evidence showing that simply in terms of physical safety, real family preservation programs have a far better track record than foster care. (See NCCPR Issue Paper #1)

The buzzword in child welfare is “evidence-based.” What that really means is: How dare proponents of any new, innovative approach to child welfare expect to get funding if they can’t dot every i and cross every t on evaluations proving the innovation’s efficacy beyond a shadow of a doubt? Old, non-innovative programs, however, are not held to this standard. If they were, child welfare would be turned upside down by the results of this new research.

That's your privilege not to believe me. I know we aren't friends. There are links that I did not write, and had nothing to do with. They show a pretty bad situation for kids caught up in the loving arms of the government child protectors. There's more.

Richard Wexler is the head of National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which is a long time respectable organization as far as i know. I didn't know that he has a sideline as well known internet troll. (Are you sure?) I am not him, he is not me and I never even met him. I put up links to his website because he has relevant things to say.

It isn't that respectable. Mr. Ignore-a-court-order is not that respectable.

There is going to come a day when someone does enough of an investigation on that respectable organization that it all kind of blows back at him. He should probably investigate the John Lott/Mary Rosh incident. It all will come out in the end. Promise.

You accused Richard Wexler of some evil deed against John Lott and Mary Rosh, two names I never knew before reading your comments. If Richard Wexler is the one who did them some wrong why can't I find his name associated with theirs? You know about this situation but google doesn't have one reference to it? Are you talking about john Lott football player or John Lott mathematician?

No reference to Richard Wexler. I don't know what you have against this Wexler guy. He's trying to reform CPS which BTW was picketed and rallied against by Occupy Oakland, much to my happiness. And Wexler is probably a very nice Jewish man with a big heart who could earn more than he probably does fighting the CPS racket.

Further, Wexler has nothing to do with either the kids or the parents. Never has. He is simply there to influence policy. The reforms that he backs is privatization. He has blinders on. He has demonstrated a complete and total disregard for those very same kids and parents that his big heart is so endeared to.

Not interested in whether Occupy Oakland picketed or rallied against CPS. It doesn't tell me anything. I read the article that you posted. Doesn't convey anything other than an emotional rant.

-] 1 points by GirlFriday (4502) 13 hours ago
It has nothing to do with unions and you know it.
↥like ↧dislike permalink

Of course privatization is about union busting. You see Wexler as a union busting privatizer. I don't know if that's true or not but my main concern in this matter is the children who get "rescued" by our wonderful government (sarcasm if I need to say it). As far as I am concerned the babysnatchers and their union can get on their knees and ask their deity to forgive them, and then go look for honest work.

Well, I don't see how I have anything to do with Lott or Mary Rosh. I never heard of them before you brought those names to my attention. I don't know if Wexler is for privatization. He's showed that CPS and foster care do not work, but do more harm than good. You are very pro union and I admire that but some "unions" represent the worst like "unions" for people who torture prisoners, "unions" for cops who brutalize and murder unarmed people and "unions" for people who kidnap and traumatize children. If I had to decide I'd rather abolish CPS entirely than leave it as it is.

Unions are for workers, people who do good and necessary things. Of course more baby snatching means more overtime and hires into CPS. This would please some "unionists". True Wexler opposes that. So do I.

"Wexler made the statement to ignore court orders. Go back and read up. I'm not going to educate you on everything."

Bullshyte. Tell me more about this John Lott and Mary what's her name. You dragged that in and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Anything but address the brutality and criminality of CPS government employees.

I'm tiring of this exchange with you. Unlike you I'm not paid to post here and have other things to do.

Wexler made the statement to ignore court orders. Go back and read up. I'm not going to educate you on everything. Needless to say, it still stands. He is not highly respected. Period. You know why. You should still be able to read his crap at the Miami Herald.

The scenario you offer above is an emotional one. It doesn't offer any reason for intervention. My first impulse is to want to find out why the authorities are there in the first place. Most of these child welfare laws were born from emotional cases, it seems that emotion over a single case makes for bad law.

Your links offer some research. Obviously whenever possible law should be based on good research results rather then emotion. I'd certainly support changing child welfare laws to reflect that.

I'm not sure protests are the way to go. Adding more passion into the mix hardly seems helpful. Have any legal challenges been made to the current system based on the studies that have been completed?

CPS child removal policy is swayed by newsbusting events and by budgetary considerations. I was in that game for eleven years, ten of them in the "emergency" department. Very rarely indeed was there a case where you could say that the kid was going to suffer serious harm if he or she or they were not to be snatched immediately. When a child's death got into the newspapers the emergency rooms all over the city would report every imaginable suspicion. Kids were snatched for imaginary sex abuse, kids were snatched for imaginary shaken baby syndrome of a sibling. The media would eventually calm down and the percent of emergency removals would go back down.

Most cases are not "abuse" but are "neglect" which often translates to "poverty" or non conformism of a parent.

As I said, these midnight raids were commonplace when I was working there (up 'till 2006) and I would imagine that hasn't changed all that much.

The reflex reaction to one bad event published in the media is exactly what I'm talking about. That's why I question the wisdom of adding a protest to the mix. It seems more appropriate to attack the removal of children from the home with the evidence from your research in the courts rather then asking for protests.

This has been going on for a millenia and there is mountains of evidence that lays out very cleary, the sheer evilness of the world's supposedly intelligent elite. Even if you watch the very first link, you will get a good idea of the magnitude of the elite paedophilia rings...the billions of $$ made....and the brutality of the lives lost.

This was a post early on in OWS about exposing the elite at the root of the problem. It is important to understand the staggering degree of callousness with the elite, so we know what we're dealing with as we remove them.

This is the elite's biggest secret they don't want revealed. If you watch even the top video, you get a pretty good idea that the elite and the government don't give a damn about us if they can do what is shown here.

Forum Post: The children that were never officially missed
Posted 4 days ago on Dec. 5, 2011, 1:33 p.m. EST by Danaan
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

It is amazing that still now after all this time no one wonders about the missed children. On average one in 1000. GONE! And everybody is asking where the money went. No one acts on the perpetrators. Well you should know that the same bankers and top rich that stole the money also are involved in the disappearance of children. Money means nothing, it is not worth anything in the end, Childs lives is. Do not let the elite kidnap and kill more of our children. They can now because the press is in their hands. Occupy DO something NOW! Spread these links and lift the thugs! Keep this link on top. Thank you from us and Im sure you get a thank you also from the millions of kids who cannot speak anymore as they lost their lives to these barbarians.

Yesterday Occupy Oakland demonstrated against CPS there. i don't think all this stuff about elite pedophilia rings helps. It's really simpler than that and mainly beside the point if you have a point. CPS steals kids from their mothers when it is not necessary. CPs traumatizes kids. CPS often brings these traumatized "rescued" kids to places much worse than those from whence they were taken.

Ok. The very first question that comes to mind is...why? Why is there an inordinate amount of young kids being stolen from their moms when it is virtually self-evident that the foster homes are more often than not, worse?

I don't want to argue with you, given that you have done an extraordinary job exposing CPS criminal activity. I just want to point out the connection to my 'elite paedophilia' post.

Most people think that CPS is a government agency. They are not. They are 'government mandated', which is very easily mistaken by the general public to mean government run. The fact is, that CPS agencies are owned by very wealthy private individuals. The elite. For profit. Huh? FOR PROFIT?? WTF??

Now what do the elite want with Child Protective Services???

The local elite factions are the judges, lawyers, doctors bankers, developers, etc in each community. Where do these wealthy people meet locally? The Freemason lodges, Shriners, Lions Clubs, Knights of Columbus, etc.

Most members of these groups are very good people. But when you get to the very top of the hierarchy (33 degree and higher) in these groups, particularly the Freemasons, they're into some pretty sordid stuff. These are sick SOBs. They are put in disgustingly compromising criminal situations so as to have extortion value against each other and they take oaths on their families lives to cover for each other if 'things' become known or legal matters need to be tended to.

The top degree masons don't let the lower degree masons know what goes on. Do a search on the darker side of Freemasonry if you get a chance. You'll be quite shocked.

Freemasonry is the local arm to the elite global paedophilia rings. Many Freemasons are involved with CPS. CPS 'rents' these kids out to other elites.

Ted Gunderson researched it for years. A powerful presentation on the subject by retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson

I don't doubt that many of the elite are rather sick fucks. Maybe every last one of them.

For example re CPS in New York 'City the agency is called Administration for Children's Services whose Commissioner answers to the mayor of new York. Most but not all foster care is farmed out to non profit agencies that are supposedly monitored and policed by ACS. You have FEGS (Jewish) Catholic Charities, the Episcopalians have one too and various other religious and non religious non profits involved. The kids are given out to foster parents for the most part. There still are group homes as well. The foster parents are mainly not elites at all. Many are poor people who look forward to the check that comes with the child. Some are actually well meaning middle class families who spend more on the kid than the check they get. One third of foster children report being abused by their foster caregiver or group home staff. Many others are abused by other foster children. In general foster children are more likely to end up in jail, to be career criminals and prostitutes than children not snatched out of similar situations.

I'm not certain what your point is. Thousands of American children are subjected to this barbarity. It is a social issue and any revolutionary movement worth the name should want to abolish it. To be clear I am talking about the government taking away mainly black and immigrant and children of white non conformists from their homes in traumatic fashion and most usually put into more dangerous environments than they are "rescued" from.

Alright, I agree with that, but it's reaching pretty far when we are still so far from being able to really control any government policy at all. It seems very much crunch time concerning how we are going to go about achieving that goal.

Yes, I think what you bring up is very valid. I hope you will forgive me if I say that right now, I think, those of us who are real and here with honest intentions already have a a fairly high level of agreement about the changes that need to be made. We are simply looking to re-create, or simply to create a decent society.

The foremost question at the moment seems to be how do we get there. This is really the question that we should be debatig now, in my opinion, because it is the critical question.

Over the course of our time on this forum there have been hundreds of issues that have come up that need to be addressed, and they have almost all been valid. The problems are legion. The question is HOW do we change them.

"How" is a big question and frankly I do not have the answer. I hope and believe that the people who take on responsibilities in the #Occupy movement are observing, reading, debating and learning. They might not have cults of personality but I do believe there are leaders, that is people who take on tasks and through their practice earn respect and tend to be more listened to or "followed" than others.

I feel a bit vindicated in talking about baby snatching by the state.

I read with great hope and a feeling of happiness that a part of Occupy Oakland's May Day were pickets and rallies at the local CPS and Family Court.

fiftyfourforty, I guess from your post that it is better to leave the kid with a drug addict mother, with a violent or peodophile boyfriend. Or possibly leave the kid in a house with no food or running water. Or let the kid be beaten and/or sexually abused. Did I understand your post correctly? In my jurisdiction children are only taken in emergency situations or as the very last resort of a long investigation and judicial process, where the parent has demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to care for the child.

We need to look at what CPS actually does, not what people who are not familiar with it imagine it must or should do. What do you think about the scenario i put forward of what a baby snatching actually is? I can attest to that because it was my job and I did it countless times.

Also since my anecdotal evidence will not sway you try looking at studies of the matter.

I've been on the "taking" end also,many times, and in each case none of us wanted to be in a position of taking a child from it's mother. But each case I was involved with it was the only thing we could do to protect the child. Life is hard, wear a helmet.

(edit) Would you object skippy2 if some unbiased Occupiers would spend some time monitoring New York or Brooklyn or Queens or Bronx or Staten island Family Court and interviewing children, parents, caseworkers? That's what I am calling for.

Skippy2 - The fact that the numbers and rates of removals vary with "journalistic" interest and budgetary considerations put the lie to your remark. If criteria for removals were consistent with rules and with law this would not be the case.

My experiences show lack of search for alternatives. Most removals are done prior to court hearings. Most removals are done without seeking relatives to step in. If indeed you have been on the removing end you know that most removals done prior to court hearings- the majority- could wait.

I dont live in NY so I have no experience with "CPS". If "CPS" is doing it wrong, it is up to you and any one else with inside knowledge to expose it. This forum is the wrong place. OWS cant even agree the sky is blue. Try the FBI civil rights divison. Even children have civil rights. Bring forth specific cases of abuse by "CPS".

I went through hell "fighting from the inside" and could not get any help. There is such bias against those accused by "child protectors" that a fair hearing seems absolutely impossible.

I disagree skippy that this is the wrong place to go about the abuses of CPS. Occupiers are among the most intelligent and sensitive people around. While you say Occupiers cannot agree on anything they seem in spite of that to have accomplished quite a bit in such short time with such small resources.